High Elves
“Twas a nice town until that elven witch showed up. The same day my cow miscarried and my rooftop started to leak. Me and boys grabbed some pitchforks to drive her out and this when she got pissed and started swearing about our ancestors. The cemetery where they lay is still haunted with their howling spectres, for many years now.” High elves vowed to never use Godspeech again, for they have already ruined the paradise with it. This weights greatly on their conscience as almost all immortal elves took part in it. Regarding themselves as true legacy of the gods, the high elves have adopted their image, trying to mimic their aesthetics and ways of life. Their clothes and armor are light, exquisite and are meant to showcase a great deal of taste and practicality. Their weapons are no mere tools of war, but an masterfully crafted pieces of art. All covered or coloured in gold - the color of gods before the fall. High Elven speak legends of a single city where all high elves live. It reminds of the lost City of Black, but it never stopped being golden. However, nobody has seen the city from where the high elves come, often calling it an “Elven Lie”, for no map contains it, and so to the world the high elves are just adventurers who tell tales of places that probably never existed. But those that study magic see the proof of its existence, for high elven mages draw their power from the golden city. It is a unique magic that manifest itself as golden or blue energy, usually seen burning bright in high elves eyes. Nobody has ever seen an old High Elf as all adventurers are actually young initiates, who must travel a path as their rite of passage. The exact place they must travel is unknown and is said to reveal itself to the elf when time is right. The Rite of Passage itself is usually a lie and there are a couple of reasons why high elves never state their true motives. Most of High Elves that claim to be on a Rite of Passage have finished it long ago and might be even high-ranked members of the society. However, it is not uncommon to meet a genuine novice on a genuine Rite of Passage. Such collective lying has been utterly overseen by the common folk, but those that deal with elves often have long ago found that the stories the elves tell don’t add up, yet even they are don’t know the full truth. Common folk regard high elves with suspicion, for terrible incidents happen if the town is visited by an elven traveler. However, knowing this, literally any incident is blamed upon elves, if they visit the same day as the incident. “Elven Curse” is a common insult thrown at these travelers, implying that elves can utter but a single word in Godspeech and corrupt everything around them. Furthermore, it doesn’t help that other common elves, namely the dark and wood ones, are openly hostile to everyone. Due to schism within high elven culture, there are two types of elves living within the Elven Golden City: the sun elves and the moon elves. High Elves of the Sun Where there is light, must be shadow. Sun Elves have embraced this ideal, by devoting their lives to secrecy, in order to hide their greatest shame; the corruption of the world. They understand that what was done is wrong and so they are trying to prevent any more damage being done. Along with using godspeech only in extreme cases, the high elves also look upon the other races to study them and identify any threats to the world they may possess. Most commonly, they look for any magical power that can scar the land akin to godspeech in order to retrieve it and contain it. Another self-imposed quest the sun elves have, is locating where the old gods have went, in order to seal them away and hide their shame. Sun Elf travelers are usually on an secret assignment to steal, sabotage or murder, still hiding behind the false story about the journey towards the Rite of Passage. However, only few sun elves even fully realize this as usually the memory about the mission is locked away with a powerful telepathic spell, set to de-spell itself when certain conditions are met. To them, all other races are inferiors who only rent this world of theirs for a time, before they go extinct. The world was made for high elves by high elves and it is their job to protect it from further damage. High Elves of the Moon When a Sun Elves strive to hide and forget the fact that they ruined the world, Most of Moon Elves have fully accepted that their kind is the villain of the world, but they do not embrace the role. Instead of taking hostile actions against the lower races, to prevent further damage to the world, they seek to help them. They do so to redeem themselves. The Moon Elves lie about being on the Rite of Passage out of shame of admitting why they travel the world, usually quickly changing the subject to avoid any questioning, asking what they can do to help. Despite being constantly mistaken for malicious sun elves, they still strive to be paragons in the eyes of common men. This often leads them to heroic, and often fatal, acts, that are meant to redeem them before others. However, one can’t survive simply by doing good deeds, so it is common for Moon Elves to require a reward for the things they do. This has led to misunderstandings, that lead people to regard Moon Elves as heartless immortals that won’t lift a finger, unless they were offered a pay.